The Monsters of Morley Manor

  We hadn’t been off the frogmonster’s nose for more than three seconds when her great mouth opened and a rush of water pulled us into a dark space—a space that got even darker when the mouth closed again.

  This time I was sure we were done for. But a second later the Wentar did some of his magic, and a dim light blossomed around us.

  The inside of the queen’s mouth was slightly smaller than my bedroom. Her tongue looked like a spongy shag rug. Sarah and I drifted down to stand on it, as the others were doing. I was relieved to find it was not as sticky and slimy as I had feared.

  Toward the rear of her mouth I saw a pair of bulges, which I finally realized must have been the back of her eyeballs. Beyond those bulges was the vast darkness of her throat—something I didn’t intend to get anywhere near, if I could help it.

  Suddenly a deep thrum filled the air around us. It took me a moment to realize that the sounds were words—huge, booming words. Later the Wentar explained that the queen formed them by making a very tiny (for her) rumble in her throat.

  “Greetings to the Wentar of Ardis and his companions.”

  “Greetings to Queen Gunk-alla-gunk-gunk-ipsim-alla-ribit,” replied the Wentar. “And our thanks to you for the sheltering warmth of your mouth. May your progeny ever increase, and your children number in the millions.”

  “They do already,” replied the queen, sounding somewhat tired. “Two million, four hundred and thirteen thousand, five hundred and seventy-nine, to be precise.”

  “Madam, you outdo yourself!” said the Wentar admiringly.

  “I undo myself,” she replied. “Now, let us get down to business, Wentar. I understand you are involved with that messy little planet called Earth.”

  “Indeed I am,” replied the Wentar. “In fact, I have seven of its people with me on this trip.”

  I thought it was nice of him to count Bob as a person.

  “That is highly unusual, is it not?” asked the queen.

  “The circumstances were unusual. I have become rather more involved in their affairs than I would like. I brought these young ones with me because we were being pursued.”

  “Ah,” said the queen. “Let me guess. The Creatures of the Red Haze?”

  “Indeed,” said the Wentar. He sounded a bit surprised.

  “Creatures of the Red Haze?” asked Gaspar. He sounded as confused as the Wentar had sounded surprised.

  “It is a name sometimes used for Flinduvians,” said the Wentar. “The ‘Red Haze’ is a condition unique to their species—a kind of anger beyond anger that they sometimes slip into. The results can be . . . remarkable.”

  “It is not a suitable condition for a civilized being,” said the queen.

  “Agreed,” said the Wentar. “Which is one reason I am monitoring them. I am almost certain they are up to something. Do you have any idea what it is?”

  “That I cannot tell you,” replied the queen. Before the Wentar could express his disappointment, she added, “However, perhaps one of my children will be able to give you some information.”

  Suddenly I felt a vibration so powerful that at first I thought it was an earthquake. Sarah staggered against me. I saw the monsters all crouching, holding on to one another, trying to keep from tumbling over. Then I realized that whatever was going on couldn’t be an earthquake, because we were standing on a giant tongue.

  Was our hostess trying to swallow us?

  “What was that?” demanded Gaspar, when the vibration stopped.

  “I have sent out the Watercall,” replied the queen. “I’m sorry you could not understand it. It will travel many miles. If any of my children have knowledge of this thing, they will come to us.” She hesitated, then added, “They have no choice.”

  “Must be a mom thing,” whispered Sarah.

  Before five minutes had passed, the queen said, “Ah! A response. I am going to ask you to go outside for the discussion. I grow tired of trying not to swallow.”

  Once she had said that, she couldn’t open her mouth fast enough to suit me.

  Together, our little party swam out to meet the creature that had answered the queen’s call. He looked enough like Chuck to be his brother. (Which, of course, he was.) He said his name was Unk-lalla-apsa-ribba-ribba-glibbit, then added, “But you can call me Unk.”

  We found a place to sit next to the queen’s left rear foot, which towered over us. Once we Earthlings had introduced ourselves, Unk said, “Mother says you want to know about the Flinduvians.”

  “That is correct,” said the Wentar. “Specifically, what it is that they want with Earth.”

  “Oh, I know nothing about that” said Unk quickly.

  I didn’t believe him for a second. His eyes were desperate, haunted—as if he was lying not because he wanted to, but because he was afraid to tell the truth.

  Chuck saw it, too. “Speak truly, brother,” he said fiercely. “I demand it by the bond of our blood.”

  Unk’s eyes rolled back in his head. He shivered, as if taken by a chill. “I know nothing about it,” he croaked.

  “In your mother’s name, I command you to speak!” cried the Wentar.

  Unk began to tremble more violently. Suddenly, as if the fear was too much, he turned and started to swim away.

  “Catch him!” cried the Wentar.

  I was closest. I grabbed Unk’s leg. The purple skin was slick beneath my fingers, the leg astonishingly strong. I clung to it with all my might. Though I couldn’t stop him by myself, I slowed him enough for the others to grab him. He thrashed wildly.

  Suddenly I had an idea. “Turn him on his back!” I shouted.

  Gaspar looked startled.

  “No!” cried Chuck. “Don’t!”

  The rest of us looked at him in surprise.

  “It’s not dignified,” he said softly.

  I think the others might have ignored my strange request if not for that. But the tension in Chuck’s voice made it clear that something about putting Unk on his back had power in it. So despite Chuck’s protests, the monsters wrestled Unk to the silty floor of the lake. As they held him down, his arms and legs pinned out straight, I began to stroke his belly, working from the throat down, just as I had done a hundred times with the frogs I caught in the swamp at the edge of Gramma and Grampa’s farm. Of course, Unk was so big that I had to use my whole hand, rather than just a fingertip. But the idea was the same.

  “You shouldn’t do that,’’ said Chuck softly, wringing his webbed hands together. “You shouldn’t do that.”

  Unk blinked his eyes, quickly at first, then more and more slowly. Soon his struggles grew less violent. Gradually, his arms and legs relaxed.

  A moment later he was lying limp and still.

  “Now is the Wentar of Ardis content?” asked Chuck bitterly.

  I stepped back, feeling very clever. “That was really good, Anthony,” whispered Sarah.

  “Shhhh!” hissed Melisande’s snakes.

  The Wentar bent over Unk. “Have you been in contact with the Flinduvians?” he whispered.

  Without opening his eyes, Unk nodded.

  The Wentar looked more sad than angry. Placing his mouth close to the side of Unk’s head (the waterguy didn’t really have an ear, just a brownish circle), he said urgently, “What do the Flinduvians want with Earth?”

  Unk made a sound deep in his throat. Then, as if the words were being dragged from someplace deep within him, he said, “They want Earth’s ghosts.”

  The Wentar blinked. The monsters made watery cries of astonishment. Sarah moved closer to me.

  Without intending to, I asked the next question: “What for?”

  Unk’s answer, which came out almost as a sob, astonished us all.

  “They’re going to use them for batteries!”

  11

  Where Is the Land of the Dead?

  GASPAR LEANED close to Unk. Eyes blazing, he hissed, “What do you mean, batteries?”

  The waterguy swallowed hard, making a deep, ribbity soun
d. “I do not know the details, only what I overheard. Your ghosts have unusual energy. The Flinduvians plan to use that energy to power a weapon they have invented.”

  Gaspar’s long tongue flicked angrily between his big lizardy jaws. “That is the most immoral thing I have ever heard!”

  I had to agree. Using the part of a person that lives on beyond death, especially using it for a weapon, sounded worse than murder to me. I wondered if it would use up the ghost—kill it. Was that even possible? And if it didn’t kill it, what would happen to a ghost that was being used for its power?

  With a sudden chill, I wondered if Grampa Walker was a ghost now. Was everyone who died a ghost, or was it just people who had unfinished business?

  Did he have unfinished business?

  Suddenly this thing with the Flinduvians seemed very personal.

  “How did you learn this?” asked the Wentar. “What is your connection with the Flinduvians?”

  “I have accepted a commission to work as their agent on this planet.”

  Chuck gasped in astonishment. “Does Mother know this?”

  “Of course not,” whispered Unk, his voice filled with shame.

  “What else do you know of their plans?” asked the Wentar. His voice was stern and angry.

  “Nothing!” cried Unk. “Nothing!”

  The Wentar didn’t seem to believe this. He asked Unk several more questions, but none of them turned up any new information.

  Finally the Wentar made a snort of disgust. “Flip him over,” he said.

  We did, which instantly broke the hypnotic spell. I expected Unk to leap to his feet and swim away. But he seemed really frightened of the Wentar now, too frightened to flee. “What are you going to do to me?” he asked, his throat bobbling nervously.

  The Wentar smiled, the kind of smile I was glad he was directing at someone else. “I’m not going to do anything,” he said softly. “I’ll let your mother handle things from here on in.”

  Unk made a tiny squeaking sound and looked as if he was about to fall down again.

  “Take him home,” said the Wentar, speaking to Chuck “Make sure he doesn’t have a chance to get any information to the Flinduvians.”

  “I will be glad to,” said Chuck, who had clearly gone from being upset with the way we were treating Unk to being furious with Unk himself.

  “Please give your mother my warmest regards, my thanks for her assistance, and my regrets that she has such an unfortunate son as Unk-lalla-apsa-ribba-ribba-glibbit. Tell her I am sure the other two million, four hundred and thirteen thousand, five hundred and seventy-eight are much more a credit to her.”

  Unk groaned.

  “It will be my pleasure,” said Chuck.

  We watched the two of them swim away.

  “Now what?” asked Gaspar, after they had vanished among the seaweed and the fishes.

  “We return to the Starry Door as quickly as possible,” said the Wentar.

  “Are we going home?” I asked eagerly.

  “I am not sure,” said the Wentar. “Two things need to be done. We must take a warning back to Earth. And we need to investigate what the Flinduvians are up to—hopefully, by regaining Martin. Both tasks are vital.”

  “It sounds as if we should split up,” said Gaspar reluctantly.

  “A good idea,” agreed Ludmilla. “Ve should not involve the children in this, anyvay.”

  Part of me was offended. Another part of me was going, Darn right! Get us out of here!

  The Wentar shook his head. “Anthony and Sarah are already involved. Since the Flinduvians are aware of them, sending them back will not ensure their safety. In fact, it could endanger them. The primary reason to split up is to carry the warning back without delay.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Sarah. “Who would we take the warning to? The FBI? The president?”

  Gaspar laughed. “These matters are beyond those dreamed of in their thoughts, which are all too tied to the world that they can see. It is unlikely they would believe us, even if we could reach them.”

  “I dunno,” I said. “If the president got a look at you guys, he’d have to believe almost anything was possible.”

  “It is good for men of power to haf their assumptions shaken,” said Ludmilla smugly.

  “Even if your leaders did believe you, they wouldn’t know what to do,” said the Wentar. “No, we need to get our warning to those most in peril.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Albert, who had been swimming around, trying to catch a passing fish.

  “I should think it would be obvious,” said the Wentar. “We need to warn the dead.”

  Bob began to howl. Melisande’s snakes slid around her head uneasily.

  “How the heck are we supposed to do that?” I asked nervously.

  “Someone must make a trip to Earth’s Land of the Dead,” said the Wentar.

  “Land of the Dead?” whispered Sarah. “That sounds pretty scary!”

  “How do we get there?” I asked. “It’s sure not on the map.”

  The Wentar turned his huge purple eyes in my direction, and suddenly I wished I hadn’t asked the question. What if the only way you could get to the Land of the Dead was by . . . dying?

  From the way Melisande’s snakes were twisting and writhing, I got a feeling that the same thought had crossed her mind.

  “I don’t even understand what it means,” said Sarah. “What is the Land of the Dead?”

  The Wentar looked very serious. Actually, with his long face and mournful eyes, he always looked serious. But now he looked even more so.

  “It is a world between life and death,” he whispered. “A place where the lost and the rebellious, the stubborn and the misguided wait, and plan, and grieve, and mourn. It is not the right place for them to be.”

  “Then why are they there?” I asked.

  The Wentar sighed. “Even though the dead should move on to what is next, not every soul is ready to let go of its previous stage of existence. Various things hold them back—sometimes pain, sometimes anger, sometimes simply unfinished business. Sometimes it is that they cannot let go of those they love. Sometimes, very rarely, it is joy that holds them. The Land of the Dead is a realm of great souls and small, a place that is not a place. Grief runs there like flowing water. Solace, too, though most ignore it. Some souls never see this place. Some stay no more than a day. But others—stubborn, or blind, or in deeper pain than most—may remain for centuries.”

  I felt a coldness as he spoke, a chill that lingered in my spine long after he was finished.

  “How do we get there?” asked Sarah in a hushed voice.

  “The easiest way is to die,” said the Wentar.

  When he saw the look on our faces, he began to chuckle, the first time I had heard him make that sound. “You needn’t worry! Just because it is the easiest way does not mean that it is the only way, or even the best. The most likely avenue is actually through a connection. Do any of you know someone who has died recently?”

  “Ve haf been locked in a box for fifty years,” pointed out Ludmilla. “I suspect most of the people ve used to know haf died. But who can guess ven they did it?”

  “Of coursssse, there wassss Martin,” hissed Melisandes snakes.

  “But he was not the real Martin,” pointed out Gaspar.

  “Real or not, it doesn’t make any difference,” said the Wentar. “Your brother did not die. His clone was taken back to Flinduvia and replaced with a replica that had never actually been alive to begin with. That is the body that was buried on Earth; it was dead flesh, nothing else.”

  “What about you two?” asked Gaspar, turning toward Sarah and me. “Do you know anyone who has not long since slipped the bonds of Earth and laid down his mortal burden?”

  “Oh, jeez, boss,” said Albert. Turning to us, he added, “What he means is, do you know anyone who’s died lately?”

  We did, of course. But I couldn’t answer him, couldn’t get the words past the lump in my th
roat.

  Sarah answered for me. “There was Grampa,” she said slowly.

  “When did he die?” asked the Wentar. To my surprise, his voice was sympathetic.

  “About three months ago,” said Sarah, her voice trembling a little.

  “Is it likely he would have been the sort not to move on?” asked Gaspar.

  “He was stubborn,” I said, smiling a bit in spite of myself.

  “I bet he’s waiting for Gramma,” added Sarah. “He never liked to go anywhere without her.”

  “Then he may be our best ticket,” said the Wentar.

  I didn’t particularly like the idea of Grampa Walker as a “ticket” to the Land of the Dead. But I liked the idea of his soul being used as a battery by some bizarre alien race even less.

  “Are you children willing to do this?” asked the Wentar, turning his purple eyes to Sarah and me. “I will not hide the fact that the journey will have its dangers. But the stakes are great, for both the living and the dead of your planet”

  I looked at Sarah. Her eyes were wide and frightened. But I knew my little sister well enough to know that just because she was afraid didn’t mean she was unwilling to do something. I raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Sarah gave me just the slightest nod.

  The Family Morleskievich weren’t the only ones who had their rituals, their ways of making decisions.

  I turned to the Wentar.

  “We’ll do it.”

  12

  A Family Divided

  THE WENTAR had to perform a reverse spell on us when we left the lake, so that we could breathe normally again. Unfortunately, the spell didn’t dry us out, so we were dripping and uncomfortable as we slogged our way back across the sproingy broccoli-grass. It was moving on toward night, and a cool evening breeze had come up, which made things even worse.

  The only one who didn’t seem to be bothered by this was Bob, who had loved being in the water and was excited by all the strange new smells around him, not to mention the sound of little animals moving nearby. Melisande had to work to keep him from romping off into any of the patches of sharp red flowers, which would have sliced his bare feet to ribbons.